Lupita Nyong’o Options Film Rights to ‘Americanah’

Get ready for your world to explode: Hollywood darling Lupita Nyong’o has just optioned the film rights to Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s bestselling novel “Americanah.”

The announcement isn’t a surprise. Earlier this year, Adichie hinted in an interview that Nyong’o loved the book and was interested in some sort of collaboration. “Lupita was a very early fan of Americanah,” Adichie told Arise Entertainment 360. “And so before she was sort of well-known in the way that she is now, she wrote me … the loveliest email, a very long and passionate email about Americanah.”

Now it’s official. Adichie confirmed the deal this week during an audience Q&A at Slylist Magazine’s book club event at the Waldorf in London.

“Americanah” tells the story of a Nigerian blogger who spends her young adulthood in the United States trying to navigate dating and race in America. It won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the 2014 Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction.

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